NEO Researcher Ups the Odds
by Kathleen McCoy |
A University of Alaska Anchorage post-doc researcher, Dr. Andy Puckett, refined the estimated trajectory of an asteroid streaking toward a possible late-January encounter with Mars. That orbital refinement led scientists to recalculate the odds of a cosmic collision to be three times better than previously thought.
UAA astronomy professor Travis Rector hired Puckett for his expertise with NEOs (Near Earth Objects) such as asteroids, comets and other Solar System renegades.
Relevant Websites
NASA's Near Earth Object Program: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/
Sloan Digital Sky Survey: http://www.sdss.org/
"NEO Researcher Ups the Odds" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.